On Sunday, March 7, at 10:25 p.m. officers of the Santa Monica Police Department were on patrol in the area of Lincoln and Pacific when they observed a male suspect riding his bicycle on the east sidewalk in violation of a Santa Monica Municipal Code.
The officers attempted to catch up with this offender in their police vehicle, and as they were doing so they saw that the man was approaching an innocent woman who was standing on the sidewalk waiting for a cab. They then saw that as the man rode by the woman he reached out and grabbed the woman’s buttocks with his hand.
The man then continued to ride away.
The officers saw that the woman had spun around in order to find out who had grabbed her buttocks, but by then the man had ridden away.
The officers eventually caught this man in the 800 block of Pico Boulevard, but when they returned to the area of Lincoln and Pacific in order to locate the woman they were unable to find her.
The officers did arrest this 28-year-old Los Angeles resident and he was charged with sexual assault, possession of marijuana, and riding a bicycle without a headlight. His bail was set at $20,000.
Editor’s Note: These reports are part of a regular police coverage series entitled “Alert Police Blotter” (APB), which injects some minor editorial into certain police activities in Santa Monica. Not all of the Mirror’s coverage of incidents involving police are portrayed in this manner. More serious crimes and police-related activities are regularly reported without editorial in the pages of the Santa Monica Mirror and its website, smmirror.com.
